Us: Gather

Ephesians 3:10-11 says, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We, as Christians, are supposed to gather for worship.  For some things in our Christian walk it helps to understand the “why” before we do the “ought to”.  What I mean is that we “ought to” meet together to worship God.  But it’s good to know the “why” so that we can be motivated to meet together.

Us: Love

Good Morning!  We’re at the midpoint of our series on worship, and we’re about to turn a corner.  In our first four messages, we focused on God and His attributes, His character, and some of the ways He reveals Himself to us.  We looked at God as our Creator, our Savior, our Shepherd, and our Father.

In today’s message and for the remainder of this series, we’re going to look into different ways that we respond to God in worship.  Today, we will talk about responding to God in love.  In the coming week’s we will look at gathering in worship, bowing in worship, and laying down our lives in worship. 

In the series introduction and flyer, we talked about how we desired to explore worship not only intellectually but also emotionally, with our hearts.  Today’s topic as much as any of the themes is going to connect with our emotions, our hearts.  We are going to reflect on how we worship God in love.

God: Father

Welcome! Today we continue our series “Sing and Tremble” on worship. For the past several weeks we have focused on the object of our worship, on God. The reason we worship God is because He is worthy of worship. Over the past several weeks we have looked at God as Creator, as Savior, and as Shepherd; this week we will explore the role and nature of God as Father. In the coming weeks we will shift our focus to some of the different ways we can worship God – but I just want to say that, obviously, we are only scratching the surface when it comes to exploring who God is and why He is worthy of worship. We could spend a lifetime talking about this – and I expect that, in Heaven, we will – God’s accomplishments, and even more, His character, His vary nature, is beyond our ability to grasp. We understand less about God than a two-year old knows about quantum physics. And it is in part because of this that our series isn’t just entitled “Sing,” but “Sing and Tremble.” The goodness and greatness of God, in the little glimpse of understanding that we have, should overwhelm us with a sense of awe.

God: Shepherd

Welcome to week four in our nine-part series on worship.  The title of the series is Sing and Tremble.  Carl shared with us during the introduction these verses from I Chronicles which form the basis for our series:

Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His dwelling place. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. Tremble before Him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!” –I Chronicles 16:23-31

The goal of this series is to explore worship together.  We not only want to increase our head-knowledge about worship, but also open wide our hearts in worship, experiencing depth and richness in our relationship to God.